160 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Added 2024-10-16 07:00:12 +0000 UTCThe lads protect their precious bodily fluids and fight in the war room as they cover Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War paranoia masterwork: Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Topics include Kubrick’s early career, fluoridation, and what it means to worry about the bomb when the rest of the world is burning.
Media Referenced in this Episode:
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. 1964.
“Armando Iannucci: Why I rewrote Dr Strangelove for our new era of nuclear terror” by Armando Iannucci. The Telegraph. October 5th, 2024.
Citations Needed: Episode 134: The 80-Year PR Campaign that Killed Universal Healthcare
“Dr. Strangelove (1964): Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus” by Charles Maland. American Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 5, Special Issue: Film and American Studies (Winter, 1979), pp. 697-717. The John Hopkins University Press.
“Mr. Roughcut: or: how graphic designer Pablo Ferro learned to split the screen, cut the crap and tell the story (in the time it took to run the titles)” by Steven Heller and Pablo Ferro. Eye Magazine. Summer 1999.
TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com
Commercial: “Dr. Strangelove’s Subterranean Swingalows” // Performed and Improvised by David Armstrong // Encouraged by A.J. Ditty
Comments
Great suggestion for an ep, this is an all-timer for me
Nietopyr
2024-10-22 21:47:30 +0000 UTCThis made me go back and watch clips. A bolt of electricity shot up my spine when Strangelove suggests that THEY won't have to pick who goes down in the mines, a computer could do it.
Jordan Y Clementi
2024-10-18 04:34:41 +0000 UTCSorry for the long comment but I really do feel this moment really captures a similar feeling of total horror at nuclear weapons better in any media I’ve seen or read besides Dr Strangelove
Maxton
2024-10-18 03:46:06 +0000 UTCOne piece of media I think captures the sheer power and horror of humanity’s use of nuclear weapons is the manga Hunter x Hunter. Heavy spoilers for the ending of the Chimera Ant arc, But how the practically unbeatable, godlike King of the Ants, who is this world-shaking threat and who is the pinnacle of all animal life, is defeated through a nuclear bomb. What is always horrifying about that moment, and gives it such force, is the way in which the author just hammers in that, compared to the force of nuclear weapons, this godlike being is nothing. This character who we’ve seen literally treat humans as livestock to be consumed realizes in its final moments that Humanity through The Bomb is more inhuman than it could ever be. And on top of this, the way in which it occurs makes this even more apparent. It is not an impersonal missile but through a dead-man’s switch detonation by an old man. An old man who is the mentor to the main character, who were meant to like as this eccentric old fighter, and who earned the King’s respect due to his own immense power, but who, facing total defeat, kills himself to defeat the King. We realize this old man is not heroic, but satisfying his own bestial urge to fight an enemy and then annihilate a threat. His final words “if there’s a hell, I’ll see you there” before the detonation, and an explanation afterword of the horrors wrought by this weapon on other civilians around the world, just destroys me every time I read it. The Bomb is the ultimate trump card against all life on this planet, the total antithesis of life itself, which does not just kill you, but makes the survivors suffer and die slowly too.
Maxton
2024-10-18 03:45:05 +0000 UTCAlso, yes Merkin was based on Stevenson and fun fact there was a long boiling rumor he was gay which ties into the Red/Lavender scare paranoia
John Leavitt
2024-10-18 00:22:41 +0000 UTCAlso it was taken as given at the time but the modern viewer might not realize how much of a hard-core Freudian Kubrick was - check out the essay INTRODUCING SOCIOLOGY about EYES WIDE SHUT which like single-handedly changed the critical consensus on it http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0096.html “Couldn’t take pictures of bridges in WW2” oh WEATHER REPORTS where illegal at the time
John Leavitt
2024-10-17 23:59:11 +0000 UTCIt plays so much funnier on the second time around cause you can admire the clockwork construction of the plot and how everyone is so completly DOOMED mostly by doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Do check out the documentary about Kubrick’s long time/ long suffering Italian assistant whim whom he appears to have had an asexual dom/sub relationship? The Killing is great, also everyone is DOOMED and also a good way to see non-Hollywood period interiors, oh that’s a shitty apartment in 1957, oh that’s a real down at heel bar, etc etc Paths Of Glory used to be regarded as Porto-Kubrick but it’s Spielberg’s favorite Kubrick so around him making A.I it got a new appreciation
John Leavitt
2024-10-17 22:51:18 +0000 UTCI don't get it. Is the Interlude supposed to be funny? This is just a normal German man.
chris
2024-10-17 22:04:30 +0000 UTCI knew someone was going to bring up "Threads" -- I saw it very recently. Holy hell.
Josh James
2024-10-17 20:34:00 +0000 UTCOh! I forgot also connections between Purity of Essence, Tissot, NoFap, and dudebros claiming superpowers from semen retention.
Gary McCammon
2024-10-17 18:55:29 +0000 UTCThe moon landing bit triggered a memory that I felt like I had to share. So, Swedish university culture has a thing called "spex" (as in short form of spectacle), which is amateur musical theatre with a bunch of idiosyncratic traditions. Some scenes are all alliteration, all dialogue is written in rhymes, and the audience is encouraged to shout instructions that the actors have to improvise on. It's very low-brow entertainment with a thin veneer of pretentiousness, I think you'd all probably enjoy it. Plays are usually historical pastiche, and I remember going to one once that riffed on the faked moon landing conspiracy theory. Long story short, Kubrick is contracted to fake a moon landing video, and somehow stumbles ass backwards into enabling an actual moon landing and getting footage of that. He then panicks over having to hide his failure, but the government conspirators all clock it as close enough to fool the moronic public but clearly fake to their educated, discerning eyes. So yeah, you managed to riff the premise of probably my favorite in that genre.
Elaine Åhlfeldt
2024-10-17 17:29:30 +0000 UTCAlso, I hope you guys have seen A Shot in the Dark, the best Pink Panther film. True cinema, and also fucking hilarious.
Dergon
2024-10-17 15:06:56 +0000 UTCSlim Pickens has such a distinctive voice. Don't know how many times I saw The Apple Dumpling Gang as a kid. Perfect choice to play villian in a film with Don Knotts and Tim Conway.
Dergon
2024-10-17 15:05:29 +0000 UTCThe commercial is amazing and that was improvised? Doctor Strange loves horse corner?! Genius! Also “a question of Semitics” wow, that’s a good one.
Elizabeth Power
2024-10-17 01:00:03 +0000 UTCA bit of additional background. General Ripper's character is thought to be modeled after Curtis LeMay, Dr. Strangelove very loosely after a combination of various Germans brought over during Operation PAPERCLIP and Edward Teller. And if you want a really scary read about art and life imitating one another, look up the Soviet "Dead Hand" system.
AceTomatoCompany
2024-10-17 00:04:03 +0000 UTCThere was a persistent rumor Kissinger modeled his affect/outfits on Strangelove
John Leavitt
2024-10-16 22:12:02 +0000 UTCA couple things: * Preppers don't want the world to end FOR THEM, just their enemies. They want to be able to do whatever, with no consequences. * Interesting link between fluoridation and COVID vaccines. I hadn't made that connection before. As well, the idea that Communism always has to be imposed, either through falsehoods or through weakness. It's never arrived at by thought, just brainwashing. * Nobody in the military or government can stop the bombers because they have been trained never, NEVER to do anything benefitting the Enemy. They literally can't stop Armageddon because they wouldn't have their power if it wasn't for loyalty to their side. (Other examples of a similar resistance by the system are left as an exercise for the student.)
Gary McCammon
2024-10-16 21:06:36 +0000 UTCGreat episode, but a couple corrections: While it's true the Air Force was concerned that there was a security leak upon seeing the accuracy of the film's depiction of a B-52, the production team had used previously published photos of a B-47, the bomber's predecessor, and scaled up the interior. The character of Dr. Strangelove was mostly patterened off Herman Kahn (with Werner von Braun, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann serving as additional inspiration); Kissinger was not a public figure quite yet, he would be gaining notoriety from pushing the missile gap theory from his work at Harvard at the time of production.
Paul G
2024-10-16 19:59:20 +0000 UTCKubrick had the poster's spirit. I don't just recognize these guys from real life, I recognize this dialogue scrolling across my timeline every day, written in nocaps with splattered punctuation. That thing about the only way to respond to an irrational consensus is absurdity, that's the reason I still can't bring myself to quit X, the Everything App
Elah
2024-10-16 18:06:21 +0000 UTCThere's another interesting thing surrounding the film, which was the lawsuit against a different film, Fail Safe. It was supposed to come out around the same time, but was so nearly exactly the same plot (with the main exception that the bomb order was a computer glitch) that Kubrick and co sued the makers of the film, had it bought by Columbia, and released months after Strangelove. Good film, though a much more serious take. There was a later remake that's also good!
Ember
2024-10-16 16:46:37 +0000 UTCIs this about my loom?
Silverbear909
2024-10-16 15:27:25 +0000 UTCThis is my acid safety movie. If I'm having a rough trip I throw this on, you can't get more existential. It's calming
Maladapted
2024-10-16 15:21:18 +0000 UTCI don't know why people always say Kubrik faked the moon landing when clearly it's the work of Kinji Fukusaku
BarFly
2024-10-16 14:23:46 +0000 UTCLiterally one of my all time favorite movies that is 100% about dick measuring in the least subtle way possible.
Jordan Y Clementi
2024-10-16 14:18:36 +0000 UTCWorth Every Cent.
Nick Gully
2024-10-16 12:59:54 +0000 UTCOne of the few good movies foreign policy gouls also like. Love this movie
Eric Adams (German)
2024-10-16 10:51:22 +0000 UTCA movie I've seen at least once every decade I've been alive and adore it every time in new ways. Best time so far was watching it in College for part of a "US International Perceptions through Media" class. Also poor George C Scott, being lied to by directors about what will and will not be used in a movie so many times in his career.
Peter Larkin
2024-10-16 10:21:42 +0000 UTC
